Remove Dougale Virus — How to Fix Guide

Dougale pop-up alerts can show up unexpectedly, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking on the Dougale advertisement may cause the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the guide of Dougale popups removal in multiple methods, and also examining your personal computer for other viruses existence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Dougale manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Dougale pop-ups?

Dougale popups are a result of adware presence. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a substantial amount of revenue for adware representatives. These promotions may consist of sometimes shocking information, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

Dougale push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is a good, low-priced and extremely successful advertising solution¹. It allows the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online shop he/she visited earlier with a 15% price cut, one will definitely use this chance and purchase it. Taking into consideration the exceptionally small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a favorite thing amidst the marketing teams of huge internet retail stores.

Nonetheless, such a successful scheme could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup ads by force to the targets of malware attack is a perfect basis for malevolent manipulations with the popup ads. And Dougale.com promotions is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a short details for the Dougale site

How have I got the Dougale virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming infected by the adware that result in the Dougale popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software can additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of programs are unsafe, due to the fact that it is very easy to build in a Dougale malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Dougale popup virus can additionally be concealed in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such websites are usually filled with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors usually approve any promotions to be published on their page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also receive something much more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the large share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially unwanted programs, like Dougale pop-up virus can initiate a variety of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications can show you the banners, where you are offered to get another strange application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is usually distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted applications, in turn, may have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related advertisements are also chosen as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not interacting with these banners, they may be clicked by someone who also uses your computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to wipe out the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Dougale pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Dougale adware clearing consists of 2 sections. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and afterwards take care of the consequences of its action. The elimination task is pretty simple, since it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-virus software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its substantial resources utilization, along with some bugs that may be pivotal for some types of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its utilization is probably impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses are capable to disable the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will undoubtedly erase the malware from your system and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s manage Dougale adware first.

Removing Dougale popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

• Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.

• Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Dougale malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :

2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :

2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

If you use Google Chrome

1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :

2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :

3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :

Opera can be reset in the next way

1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :


2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will connect the correct DNS while connecting to the website you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following content³:

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes the things much more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Dougale pop-up advertisements are altering the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse soon. In certain cases, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you attempt to open settings once more.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

How to Remove Dougale Pop-ups?

Name: Dougale

Description: Dougale - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Dougale.com push notifications?” or “why do Dougale.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Dougale pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

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1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and the reasons why I advise it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.